Setting Goals for Improved Bicycle Riding

Do you know where you’re going with your bicycle riding? Do you know what your current mileage is and how much you’re planning to ride this year? Do you have a target weight? How do you plan each bike ride you do? Do you roll out of the driveway knowing what the plan is for that ride or do you decide when your tires hit the pavement? Are you planning on riding in an upcoming charity event or race? If so, what’s your finish expectations? In short, do you have a goal, or goals, to accomplish what you want to do on your bicycle? If not, you dramatically increase your chances of failing or not performing as well as you wanted to.

Why do we have goals?

We set goals in order to achieve something important. Goals are our recognition of a problem, or opportunity, and serve as a target for us to focus on. Without goals we risk wandering aimlessly in our bicycle riding. Setting goals requires that we establish our baseline and determine where we want to be in the future. Setting goals puts the proverbial carrot out in front and keeps us moving towards the completion of that goal.

A goal properly set is halfway reached.
-Abraham Lincoln

Defining your goals

There are several factors that must be taken into account when you want to define your goals.

Where are you now? You have to have a starting point which means you need to make an assessment of your current situation. If you’re looking to lose weight you need your current weight. If you’re looking to improve your health see your doctor and get a complete checkup. If you’re looking to improve your riding record your most recent workout data to set as a baseline. Only by knowing where you are now can you plot a course to get where you want to be.

Where do you want to be? Do you know where you want to be with your bicycle riding, weight, or overall fitness? If you don’t, you need to figure it out. Do you want to ride a certain number of miles per week, month, or year? Do you want to drop a specific number of minutes off your weekday loop or commute time? Do you have a target weight you want to be at? Do you need to drop your cholesterol, blood pressure, or resting heart rate? Do you want to complete your first century ride or compete in a race next year? These are the types of questions you need to answer before you can figure out where you want to be.

How do you measure your progress? In order to determine if your bike rides are doing you any good you have to determine how you’re going to measure your progress towards your goals. Setting a goal and not measuring your progress leaves you wondering if you’ll ever achieve the results you wanted. So, how do you measure your progress? Some are:

How do you get to your goal? This is where the rubber meets the road. Literally. If you want to improve your bike riding, fitness, or health, you have to define, specifically, the action required to get there. For example, if you want to put in 5000 training miles this year you need to determine the number of miles you need to ride per month and per week. In this example, you’ll need to put in approximately 417 miles per month or 104 miles per week to achieve that goal. You’ll need to measure your progress periodically to ensure your on track to meet that 2000 training miles goal. If you find yourself trailing behind you’ll need to re-adjust your plan (increase the daily/monthly mileage) to achieve your goal.

SMART Goals

SMART is a common method used to help in defining goals. SMART stands for:

Specific

Measureable

Action-Oriented

Realistic (yet challenging)

Time-defined

Specific and Measureable. Your goals must be specific and you must have a way to measure them. If you simply say to yourself, “I’m going to ride my bike more this year” what do you think the chances of you actually following through on that are? How would you know if you were riding more than last year? It would be better to write your goal as, “Increase my training mileage this year by 30 miles per week.”

Action-Oriented. How are you going to increase your mileage by 30 miles per week? Expand your goal by defining exactly how your going to do it. How about, “I will increase my training mileage this year by 30 miles per week by commuting to work one more day per week”, or, “by increasing my Saturday training ride to 50 miles”, or, “by participating in the Monday night group ride at the local bike shop.” Writing your goal this way reminds you exactly how you were going to achieve it.

Realistic and Time Defined. You’ve got to look at your goal and make sure that it’s both realistic and can be achieved in the time you allot for yourself. If you’ve only been putting in 500 training miles per year how realistic do you think it is to set a goal to ride 5000 training miles the next year? Not very. You have to make an honest assessment of your abilities and use that to help set your goal. Additionally, you’ll need to propose a realistic time scale to accomplish the goal. If you’re looking to lose fifty pounds and give yourself twelve weeks to do it you’re setting yourself up to fail. Healthy weight-loss is 1 to 2 pounds per week which means a fifty pound loss should take, at a minimum, 25 weeks to accomplish.

Write your goals down

Can you remember everything without writing it down? I know I can’t. That’s one reason to write your goals down. Another is that writing your biking goals down allows you to refer to them often as a motivational tool to keep moving towards that goal. Another is that being able to refer to your written goals allows you to make modifications if necessary. You can’t make modifications if you can’t remember what you were trying to achieve. Written goals help hold you accountable as well. Put your goals on the mirror so you see them every morning when you get up. Share your goals with your spouse, friend, or riding buddy. If you’re comfortable doing it, you can blog about your goals as well. Sharing your goals lets others know what’s important to you and perhaps they can help you achieve them. Who knows, maybe they have goals of their own that you can help them with.

6 Comments

Great post. I opted to post my 2008 goals on my blog at the beginning of the year: http://kc-bike.blogspot.com/2008/01/plans-for-08…. – My three goals were to get 5,000 miles this year, to do at least one official century ride, and to have less than 10 car-commute days.

I'm on course, having driven to work only once this year so far, and having done the 200k brevet (137 miles in one run of things).

Mileage has me a bit concerned. I scraped together a bit more than 4,200 miles last year (my first full-year of cycling as an adult). So far, I've averaged 14.1 miles per day. If I can keep that up through the rest of the year, I'll be fine. If that average at any point slips below 13.7, I am in jeopardy of losing my goal.

I have other "wish list" items such as wanting to get below 190 pounds and STAY under 200 over the coming winter. Those are pie in the sky. Tackling too many goals at once is always a bad thing — especially when those are goals that require diligence throughout the entire year (like driving to work as few times as possible, keeping weight off and getting a certain number of miles).

Things such as mastering 100 continuous push-ups, building up to a century ride, or doing your first triathlon are potentially easier if they're goals that you're capable of accomplishing within reason.

@Noah: Thanks and great comment. You've got some great goals for this year and I know you'll get them. You bring up a good point about tackling too many at one time.

I'm in the process of re-defining my goals for 2008 and I'm tempted to not even make a goal about my weight. Ever since I was in the military I've worried and fretted over my weight and invariably turn into a scale watcher. I would ride an emotional roller coaster as my weight fluctuated from day-to-day. I think it discouraged me in attaining weight loss. I think I'm going to concentrate on my riding goals throughout the end of the year and let my weight take care of itself. If I follow some good riding goals, it should.

When I started, I had one goal. Lose weight that's it. I've lost 80 lbs, but have many more to lose. In my second year of riding as an adult, I completely lost track of that goal and shifted to riding a specific mileage which really blows my one and only stated goal.

I have re-assessed my program and have come to terms that I need to also have other exercise in my program. Weight lifting, swimming and….gulp, running, well right now, walking really fast ***snickers***. This time next year, I want to have lost another 50 lbs at a minimum.

Just started reading your blog. Great stuff. I hope you're dropping the weight you wanted to lose. I had a similar goal (went from 223 to 173), and cycling plus a little jogging got me there. Regarding groups — one of the things that had the biggest impact for me was finding a group ride. YOU CAN FIND ONE THAT FITS YOUR NEEDS. You just have to look. And it makes a big difference. Keep up the good posts!

@331: Thanks. When I started out I was doing ok but then I had the major setbacks with the burning of my hand and the crash that messed up my knee pretty bad. I'm fully healed now and with this tropical storm gone I'll be back to riding again in earnest.